Two Decades On, Why Are We Still Stuck With Uniques And Pageviews?

December 21, 2012 3:26 pm

Pageviews and uniques served as solid metrics for quite some time, when it was difficult to measure popularity and user engagement in other meaningful ways. In the past decade, there have been multiple attempts to redefine user engagement with some corresponding metrics – as the content changed on the web, to an extent this became inevitable. So hours of video watched, minutes spent on a social network etc have come up. But here is the thing: even today, for the most part, success on the Internet is measured by pageviews and uniques. “The site grew to xxxx million uniques in x days” is something you hear very often. Also note that something very similar is happening in the app world – number of downloads.

Why are we still stuck with uniques and pageviews? Is it because they are easy to grasp, or is it because even today, they truly reflect the success of a website?

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